CSUSM studies surfing's health benefits

Recreational surfing has been identified with a healthy Southern California lifestyle since the early 1960s, but a Cal State San Marcos University study could be the first academic look at its actual health benefits.

CSUSM kinesiology department professors Sean Newcomer and Jeff Nessler, both surfers, launched the three-year study with about 50 subjects last semester as part of their exercise physiology laboratory class. Students who took that class are continuing as mentors in the research, which includes 80 new subjects.

“There’s about 15 papers published on professional surfers, but nothing on recreational surfing,” Newcomer said about the project, which he said is the first of its kind.

Students are filming subjects as they surf at North County beaches and monitoring their heart and breathing in lab exercises at CSUSM.

“We’re trying to see if the stimulus itself of surfing is going to have key physiological impacts on variables we know are correlated to disease,” Newcomer said.

To do that, the study is monitoring surfers of all ages to see the long-term health benefits of the sport.

“We want to understand if a person continues in later adulthood, are they going to be less prone to have cardiovascular disease?” Newcomer said. “Are they going to be less likely to fall and fracture their hips because they don’t have reduced strength and balance?”

Newcomer said studying the physiological and biomechanical aspects of surfing will provide information about both the health benefits and potential health risks of recreational surfing.

Students Study Recreational Surfing

“For instance, understanding the heart-rate response in recreational surfers while surfing will allow us to assess the cardiovascular benefits of those participating in surfing and how this may impact their risk for cardiovascular disease,” Newcomer said.

The study is unfunded this year and has a nominal cost because it uses equipment already in the lab. CSUSM students get class credit for the work — 20 percent of their grade comes from the project, and the course is worth four credits.

Newcomer said he hopes to get future support from the surf industry because of the potential for product testing.

“Understanding the impact that wearing a wet suit has on range of motion could provide insight into more effective wet suit designs,” he said. “There are many more practical applications of this research, and we are currently just scratching the surface.”

A more immediate effect of the study is giving students real-world applications for skills they learn in class.

Anyone hitting a North County beach on an early weekday morning in the past few months might have spotted a small crew of student researchers with a camera, tripod and clipboard gathering data for the study.

Some subjects are recruited right on the beach. Others — such as a group of La Costa Canyon High and San Dieguito Academy students — signed on after researchers contacted them in their surfing physical education class.

At Cardiff State Beach one recent morning, CSUSM students compiled data from seven San Dieguito Academy students, including Jared Davis, 18.

After coming out of the water, Davis began peeling off his wet suit to reveal a heart monitor that had been strapped to his chest.

“You notice it while you’re paddling out,” he said, adding that it didn’t bother him, but other students had found it uncomfortable. “It’s all about placement.”

Davis’ heart monitor was synced to a wrist watch, which CSUSM student researcher Andrea Alonte said takes his heart rate every five seconds.

Scrolling through the watch’s setting, she jotted down his average and his maximum heart beats for the hour he surfed.

“We’re trying to prove they’re getting the range for the maximum health benefit,” she said. For someone Davis’ age, that would be around 205 beats a minute, she said.

In a more detailed part of the study, Alonte and a fellow researcher filmed San Dieguito senior Cole Driscoll, 17, as he surfed with his P.E. class that morning.

“They shoot us surfing, and we get to see it afterward,” said Driscoll, who wore a bright orange jersey in the water so the CSUSM students wouldn’t lose sight of him. “I’d like to see how many times I fall.”

Driscoll said he’s also got to keep track of his heart rate because of the study, and he’s noticed that it has gone down as he’s gotten in better shape during the class.

After a session of filming, the CSUSM students take the footage and watch it back in the lab. The footage is synced to a heart monitor, and researchers are able to tell what actions cause a change in heart rate.

“It’s definitely higher when they’re riding a wave, when they’re paddling, and when they crash,” Alonte said. “I saw that when they’re underwater for a while and you can’t see them, their heart rate goes up. I think they’re scared. I remember a guy crashed, his board went up, and his heart rate went BOOM.”

Newcomer said the study has several components, including researching heart rates of regular surfers from their teens to as old as 65.

The study also includes lab research about leg strength, which Newcomer said may help explain why a surfer chooses a regular or “goofy foot” when standing on a board.

In another component, subjects lay atop a surfboard on a swim bench ergometer, a device that measures how fast they can paddle with their arms.

Poway resident Dawn Oswald, 42, participated in the study in late March.

“It sounded like a pretty cool study,” she said at the lab. “Every one of us who does it knows that it’s good exercise, so it’s cool that they’re documenting it.”

Oswald was fitted with a heart monitor and a mask that would track her breathing.

“It’s going to get a little bit uncomfortable,” a student researcher said as he fit her with the mask.

“You don’t have to worry about getting wet or anything like that,” joked Daniel Pitt, a health science kinesiology student who helped Oswald prepare for the study.

She then lay on the board, slipped her wrists through stirrups and began paddling.

“All right, start paddling for us at 10 watts, please,” Pitt instructed, watching a screen that monitors her effort by the electricity her motions create.

At three minutes, she was producing 32 watts. By the time she hit 40 watts, her arms were a blur.

“Nice, fluid strokes,” a student told her. “Keep going. Great job.”

At 4 minutes 45 seconds, she’d had enough. Pitt said he had seen top surfers hit 100 watts.

The study is looking at three variables, he said. One is how much oxygen the body uses to convert food into energy; another is the respiratory exchange ratio between the oxygen used and CO2 produced in one breath.

The third variable is the rated perceived exertion, or how soon a subject hits the wall in the exercise.

Subjects aren’t paid, but Oswald said she was pleased to get the results, the equivalent of a fitness checkup that otherwise could have cost $150.

Newcomer said other studies of surfers did not include women and usually had only 10 or 20 subjects.

About 600 surfers may have participated in the research by the end of the three-year study, and students from Pacific Academy in Encinitas are expected to join in a few weeks, Newcomer said.